Articles Posted inUnderstaffing

In response to the increase in for-profit nursing homes and recent data on nursing staff levels across the state, New York lawmakers plan to introduce a bill establishing minimum levels of nursing staff at long-term care facilities across the state. According to state legislators, under-staffing remains a serious problem at New York nursing homes and directly contributes to a lower quality of care for their elderly residents. Originally drafted two years ago, Republicans in the state legislature blocked the measure. However, with Democrats set to control all branches of government next year, the Safe Staffing for Quality Care Act will likely become law.

The proposed legislation will establish a minimum ratio of nursing staff to patients, which will vary by the level of care required for the patient. For patients undergoing active rehabilitation at a nursing home, there cannot be less than one nurse or nursing assistant for each patient. Further, the bill would require a nurse to spend an average of 291 minutes with each patient every day. According to The Buffalo News, this would be a significant change for most nursing homes. According to the newspaper’s analysis, only 8 percent of New York nursing homes currently satisfy these requirements.

The federal government announced this month that it will begin performing more surprise inspections at nursing homes in an effort to crack down on nursing homes with inadequate staffing. According to the government, these surprise inspections will be done on Saturdays and Sundays at nursing homes with records of insufficient nursing staff on the weekends. According to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), nursing staff levels are directly correlated with the quality of care received by the nursing home residents.

Over a decade after the federal government mandated CMS collect payroll data and publicize each nursing home’s results, the federal agency finally overhauled its information technology system and began publicizing the information this year. While staffing levels at nursing homes were previously determined by “spot-checking” during yearly inspections, the new method for calculating uses payroll data from the entire year. Consequentially, the new method employed by CMS provides a more accurate and complete picture of staff levels.

More senior citizens are dying from falls each year, a problem that is only expected to get worse as the country’s population continues to age. According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 30,000 Americans over the age of 65 died as the result of a fall. To put that into perspective, falls killed 61 out of every 100,000 senior citizens in 2016, the year with the most recent data available. In 2007, only 47 out of every 100,000 deaths were caused by a fall. This means fall-related deaths have increased 37 percent in less than a decade.

About one in every four elderly Americans has a serious fall each year, according to experts. These falls typically result in broken bones or traumatic brain injuries. The risk of death caused by a serious fall increases with age. Americans between 65 and 74 only have 15 fatal falls for every 100,000. For those that are over the age of 75, that statistic increases to 248 per 100,000, according to the data released by the CDC. Women are at a higher risk than men of both falling and dying from a fall. If the fall-related mortality rate continues at the same pace then 59,000 senior citizens will die from a fall in 2030, according to The Los Angeles Times.

A rarity only a few decades ago, nursing homes operating for profit have exploded across the country. According to NPQ, for-profit nursing homes account for over 70 percent of all facilities across the country. According to elder care advocates, the rapid takeover of the nursing home system has harmed America’s vulnerable senior citizens. Instead of focusing on providing the best quality care for a reasonable price, for-profit nursing homes choose to maximize their income while limiting their costs and the resulting legal liability from their cost-cutting measures.

In general, the rise of for-profit nursing homes has coincided with the consolidation of the nursing home industry which means a senior citizen is more likely to choose a corporate nursing home chain than the once-ubiquitous retirement communities that operated solely for the best interest of their residents. Considering the deep pockets of a corporate chain, it would be reasonable to assume the potential for large settlements in the cases of mistreatment or elder abuse would incentivize these corporations to treat their residents with the utmost respect.

In response to insufficient medical and nursing staff, Medicare has lowered ratings for 1 out of every 11 nursing homes across the country. The lowered ratings come after the government agency retooled the way it calculates the nursing staff at each nursing home. Under the new method, which requires nursing homes to submit payroll information every quarter, nursing staff numbers appeared grossly deficient at facilities across the country. After Medicare warned nursing homes in April about a possible reduction in their rating without an increase in nursing staff, the government agency followed through last week and reduced the star-rating for nearly 1,400 nursing homes across the country.

For the most part, the nursing homes with recently reduced ratings lacked a sufficient number of registered nurses, which are the “highest-trained caregivers” and responsible for managing other nurses. Under Medicare guidelines, a nursing home only needs to have a single registered nurse working eight hours per day. However, most nursing homes are not meeting these simple guidelines or could not provide payroll information proving the requirement was satisfied. According to Medicare officials, payroll information is not usually “taken seriously” by nursing homes and forcing the facilities to provide proof through their payroll system will hopefully force nursing homes to take their record keeping more seriously.